Gilberto Owen's La llama fría: a forgettable story or a lyrical novel?

Abstract

Gilberto Owen (1904-1952) is a Mexican poet, member of the Contemporary generation. Such a generation of writers was characterized by opposing realism and nationalist aesthetics to exercise a type of modern poetry and narrative under the influence of the European avant-gardes. Among those influences is that of the lyrical novel.                Based on this, this article analyzes a narrative text by Owen little studied by literary critics: La llama fría (1925), based on the theoretical notions of a lyrical novel coined by Ralph Freedman, Darío Villanueva and Ricardo Gullón. Against the grain of a certain sector of criticism, the purpose of this work is to conceptualize this text as a lyrical and avant-garde novel within the framework of the experimental prose of Gilberto Owen as a representative of the Contemporary generation.